The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, January 11, 2019

How Palestinian Schoolbooks Indoctrinate Students Against Israel - David Bedein

​by David Bedein

Peace with the Jews is not an option.

The think tank that I run, the Center for Near East Policy
Research, has completed a four-year research activity in which all 364
schoolbooks for grades 1-12 that were published by the Palestinian
Authority (PA) in the years 2013-2018 were examined. The chief
researcher whom we hired to examine the texts used by the Palestinian
Authority and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools
was Dr. Arnon Groiss, a scholar of Middle Eastern studies. The goal of
this research project was to check the Palestinian attitude toward the
Israeli-Jewish "other" and to the possibility of solving the war with
the "other" in a peaceful manner, in the spirit of the peace agreements
known as "the Oslo Accords" that were signed by the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) and Israel in 1993-1995. The project yielded three studies
which demonstrate that Palestinian students are learning that a
peaceful resolution of the war with Israel is not an option. Instead,
the theme that runs through the PA curriculum is that "Palestine" must
be liberated from "Zionist occupation" by way of an armed struggle
titled "Revolution [Thawrah]," which involves terrorist actions styled as "self-sacrificing operations ['amaliyyat Fidaiyyah]."

You can see this in the context in a PA schoolbook reference in one of
the books to the "1972 Munich operation" in which 11 members of the
Israeli team at the Olympic Games were massacred (History Studies, Grade 11). Those who carry out such actions are called "self-sacrificing ones [Fidais]"
and those among the liberation struggle are called on to liberate the
Muslim holy place of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and removing it from
the Jews' sway.

Palestinian pupils are taught that “struggle
for liberation” is not limited to the areas of the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip, but rather the whole country from the River Jordan to the
Mediterranean Sea, as Zionist occupation is said to have started in 1948
in what is termed "the Catastrophe [Nakbah]", and not in 1967. Israel's pre-1967 territory is termed "the Palestinian territories that were occupied in 1948" (Management and Economics,
Grade 11). Pre-1967 Israel is never presented as a legitimate sovereign
state nor does it appear on the map where it is replaced in its
entirety by "Palestine."

Israel's very name is replaced in PA
texts as "the Zionist Occupation" or "the Zionist Entity," which should
be extirpated from the Middle East (History Studies, Grade 12).
Cities inside pre-1967 Israel, such as Nazareth, Jaffa, Haifa, Acre,
Tiberias, Beer Sheba and Ashkelon, are transformed by PA schoolbooks
into Palestinian cities. Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war and
their five-million-or-so descendants are mandated by PA education to
return to liberated Palestine and thus the 70-year old "Catastrophe"
would end.

PA schoolbooks present all of the six million Jewish citizens as colonizing settlers motivated by racist sentiments (History Studies,
Grade 12), who occupied Palestine, massacred and expelled many of its
original inhabitants, and have held the rest “under occupation” to this
very day. The illegitimate status of the Jews in the country in the eyes
of Palestinian educators is well expressed by the noted absence from
the map of cities established by Jews in modern times, or showing them
under Arabic names. Tel Aviv's name is presented as "Tal al-Rabi.“ Eilat
appears as "Umm al-Rashrash."

Not only is the current Jewish
presence in Palestine delegitimized, but PA education denies past Jewish
history in the country, as well as their holy places that are presented
as exclusively Islamic ones, including the Western Wall in Jerusalem
and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. The Jews' notions of
historical ties to Jerusalem in particular, are described in PA texts as
"baseless claims," "superstitions," "legends," "illusions," and
"distorted narratives" (Arabic Language 1: Reading, Grammar, Prosody and Expression - Academic Path, Grade 12) and the Jews themselves are presented as "usurpers" and "invaders."

As if this heavy de-legitimization of both Israel's existence and
the Jews' very presence in the country is not enough, the PA schoolbooks
also contain numerous pieces demonizing all Jews within two Islamic
contexts: as a people disobedient to, even blasphemous of, God,
according to Koranic verses, and as a group hostile to Muhammad, the
prophet of Islam, and the early Muslims in Arabia. The impact of these
accusations on the minds of young Palestinians who are relatively
religiously-oriented portrays all Jews in Israel in a negative light,
even more than their demonization in the context of the ongoing
Arab-Israeli war which was launched by the Arab League in 1948. Israel,
referred to in the PA texts by the epithet "the Zionist Entity," is
demonized in the context of the "primary sin" of its very establishment.

The effort of the PA schoolbooks is augmented by the absence of any
objective information about Israel and the Jews that would
counterbalance it. Nor do the PA schoolbooks refer to the Jewish-Israeli
individual as an ordinary human being. Jews are referred to as a hated
ethnic group, with all the accompanying connotations of alienation and
threat, which makes them a legitimate target for violence. Indeed, using
violence against Israel and the Jews is considered by the PA
schoolbooks as legitimate (in defense of Islam and its holy places in
the country), moral (in light of their perceived inherent evil), and
legal (because they are presented as foreign occupiers who act in
contradiction to international law, and said to constitute an
existential threat to the Palestinian people).

Peace and
co-existence cannot be an option, given the indoctrination of PA
schoolbooks. Thus, these new schoolbooks contribute to the perpetuation
of war. Indeed, one of the findings of the present study is that such
indoctrination has spread to all school subjects, especially
mathematics, and it appears as well in purely professional textbooks
such as "Small Businesses" and "Management and Economics" of the
Entrepreneurship and Business stream and "Entrepreneurship in Business"
of the Technological stream.

We have presented our findings
before the U.S. Congress, the Canadian Parliament, the Swedish
Parliament, the British Parliament and, most recently, at the United
Nations. People who support peace in the Middle East should raise their
voices and demand that the Palestinian Authority change its war-oriented
curriculum as a precondition to any move towards peace, in accordance
with its commitments by virtue of the Oslo Peace Accords which form the
basis of the very establishment and operation of the nascent PA. A peace
accord without peace education seems futile.

David Bedein is a Journalist, founder of the Israel Resource News Agency and
Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research. His website, www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com, has produced more than 3000 news stories, 18 short films and two books: Genesis of the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA: Road Block to Peace.Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272465/how-palestinian-schoolbooks-indoctrinate-students-david-bedein Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter